Magento

Magento was perhaps the first elite ecommerce platform on the world wide web, having created a wealth of features that its practitioners adore and that its competitors emulate. Its codebase is extremely customizable, much more so than almost any other ecommerce platform (need a custom checkout process? easy peasy!), and the platform is built for scalability (10,000 SKUs? no problem!). Magneto’s performance is enhanced with built-in cacheing solutions for page content, database queries, search and more.

Harmonic Northwest’s flagship Magento project is the Van’s Aircraft store, which handles over 7,000 SKUs and  features tons of customizations, connections and supporting Laravel applications. Selling kit aircraft parts is a complex operation—think complex bills of materials, ERP integrations, tricky regulatory compliance, regional and product-specific tax rules—and Magento has been up to the task every step of the way. Our Magento team is second to none and if it can be done with Magento, Harmonic Northwest can do it.

Complete coverage

Over the years, Magento has incorporated all of the features that shop owners need. Its data structure handles all sorts of order states (think line-item level back orders and call-for-price), product data and account privileges.  It was and still is a pioneer in creating efficient checkout flows that result in more sales and fewer abandoned carts. All of the payment options you desire are available without the excessive additional markup that you often see in SaaS-driven stores. Its tagging and categorization of products is as powerful as it is intuitive. And if the core product doesn’t have what you need, odds are a third-party provider has created a plugin for what you need that you can buy in the extension store.

Multi-store capable

Need a series of related stores that you can manage from one easy interface? Then Magento might be for you. Multi-store capability is built into its core functionality and you won’t have to pay an arm and a leg for per-store plugin licenses as you might on certain other platforms.

Hugely scalable

Magento stores can get big—real big. The platform has no problem handling thousands of SKUs and product variations. You won’t find yourself wrestling with complications stemming from a sizable and complex product catalog… in fact, Magento shines brightest when it is handling lots of products with complex business rules.

Advanced performance features

If you’re looking for a particular performance feature, Magento probably has it. Varnish handles full-page cacheing. Indexing and various forms of bulk processing can be offloaded to avoid server timeouts. Redis handles session storage and generally cacheing. OpenSearch and Elasticsearch optimize searches and can be externalized. CSS and JavaScript compilation and minification is the norm. Magento can implement a split database architecture (via Adobe Commerce) and scale servers horizontally. The Magento Profiler can be used for performance monitoring or a third party solution like New Relic or Datadog.

A star of B2B

Magento is renowned for its business-to-business features that include wholesale catalogs, company accounts, purchase orders, quote requests and more. If your business does B2B, you should definitely take a hard look at Magento.

Extensions galore!

You’ll find a ton of third party Magento extensions to help you operate your business and sell products. ShipperHQ provides shipping rate rules and management. AvaTax by Avalara helps you calculate the correct tax for your products and buyers. Yotpo Reviews collects and displays customer reviews. MailChimp for Magento handles email marketing signups. Firebear Import and Export handles bulk imports from a structured data file.